I haven’t participated in it, I’ve never tried it, and I probably wouldn’t even recommend it, but I am intrigued by the idea and was interested in finding out more about it. My limited knowledge on the subject is: your CPU runs faster, but it also runs hotter, so you may have better performance, but you also may burn out your system. Most people will never need to overclock their CPU, and doing so will almost certainly void your warranty: Overclocking isn’t for everyone […] it can be time consuming and frustrating, […] But there’s a unique sense of satisfaction to be gained from pushing your hardware to its limits and achieving greater performance than you’ve actually paid for.

What is overclocking?
Simply put, overclocking refers to running a system component at higher clock speeds than are specified by the manufacturer. At first blush, the possibility of overclocking seems counter-intuitive—if a given chip were capable of running at higher speeds, wouldn’t the manufacturer sell it as a higher speed grade and reap additional revenue? The answer is a simple one, but it depends on a basic understanding of how chips are fabricated and sorted.

An excerpt from: A beginner’s guide to overclocking

Again, this is an interesting article that provides a great deal of insight into how a chip is made and a bit on how they work, but even for a highly skilled individual, overclocking can lead to headaches and ruin hardware. SuperbHosting.net does not recommend an individual attempt to overclock the CPU of their personal computers or their server, and those that choose to do so are completely responsible for the results, good or bad.